Smile

 Before I start I just want to say how much fun I had at the Onaway parade. It was fun like always and we got to win 1st place back to back. Which is pretty cool.
   Now in my life I have have become accustom to not smiling a lot. Now I know what you might think, but Randy I have seen you smile a lot before. Well yes and no. When I am with friends it is easy to smile, when I am with family it is easy to smile, but when I am by myself I don't smile at all. I spend a lot of time by myself. I could watch something hilarious, but won't find the need to laugh or smile. I have had friends in my past and all the way to the present, but I did not hang out with them all the time maybe once or twice a week, and on good months multiple times in a week. Growing up my parent worked a lot to help give me the future I have now and I am grateful for that, but I was alone for a good portion of my life. I do not blame my parents for any of my alone time, but I did nothing to stop it either.
   What I have difficultly in doing is smiling when it is called for. For example being friendly to someone, or someone smiles at you and normally you smile back. What happens for me is I either don't smile at all so I kinda look like a jerk, or I think I am smiling, but in reality I am barely smirking. I used to not smile a lot as a kid either, but I have definitely improved since then.
    When I have successfully smiled at others when appropriate I found the action difficult and embarrassing. My cheeks always feel so heavy whenever I try to smile. Then one day I was told it is like any other muscle you have, if you never practice you never get any better at it and won't build muscle. So I guess you could say I kinda practice smiling now; not always in public, but mostly at home. It still feels weird to do, but I guess it is better then walking with a depressed or doom and gloom look on my face all day. Also I am not trying to fake it, I just want to be more approachable, if someone were to need help or if they wanted to become friends. It is kinda difficult to explain my goal, because I do have realistic expectation from what I am just having a hard time explaining it.
    I would definitely say most of my smiling happens at kung fu. It is the one place where I am the happiest. Mainly because of the people in Kung fu that make me happy. This might be one of my more weirder blogs I have written, but I guess this helps me writing all this down for me to see.
I will end it here so remember everyone ordinary people extraordinary actions.


Sifu. R. Langner